Survivors of the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor gathered Wednesday to remember the 2,400 people who lost their lives exactly 70 years ago.

“Just as every day and unlike any other day, we stop and stand fast in memory of our heroes of Pearl Harbor and the Second World War,” Rear Adm. Frank Ponds, commander for Navy region Hawaii, told the gathering.

U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus took note of the devastating legacy of the two-hour attack on Pearl Harbor 70 years ago.

“The history of December 7, 1941, is indelibly imprinted on the memory of every American who was alive that day. But it bears repeating on every anniversary, so that every subsequent generation will know what happened here today and never forget,” Mabus said.

Residents fearfully left their homes Saturday to bury their dead in northeast Nigeria following a series of coordinated attacks that killed at least 69 people and left a new police headquarters in ruins, government offices burned and symbols of state power destroyed.

A radical Muslim sect known locally as Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attacks in Borno and Yobe states, with the worst damage done in and around the city of Damaturu. The group also promised to continue its bloody sectarian fight against Nigeria’s weak central government, with residents nervously moving through empty streets, waiting for the next attack.

. . .

Boko Haram wants to implement strict Shariah law across Nigeria, an oil-rich nation of more than 160 million which has a predominantly Christian south and a Muslim north. Its name means “Western education is sacrilege” in the local Hausa language, but instead of schooling, it rejects Western ideals like Nigeria’s U.S.-styled democracy that followers believe have destroyed the country with corrupt politicians.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Uganda, for someone who’s won the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama sure seems to have an insatiable bloodlust for military adventurism and intervention. I thought he was elected to end U.S. involvement in overseas wars, not double it.

President Obama has deployed a small contingent of elite troops to aid Ugandan government forces battling a murderous insurgent group.

The first troops departed for the Central African nation Wednesday, part of a complement that will total about 100 American soldiers.

They’ll assist in the fight against the Lord’s Resistance Army, Obama wrote in a letter to Congressional leaders.

“Although the U.S. forces are combat-equipped, they will only be providing information, advice, and assistance to partner nation forces, and they will not themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense,” Obama said.

Did I miss the memo explaining exactly how events in Uganda are a threat to vital U.S. national security interests or is this, like Libya, just another Obama and Samantha Power “Responsibility to Protect (R2P)” military excursion extravaganza? I suspect it’s the latter and if we have a R2P civilians in Uganda, where no vital U.S. national security interests are at stake, why the [expletive deleted] aren’t we intervening in Syria, where thousands of civilians have been killed and the rogue Assad regime clearly has U.S. blood on its hands?

/all I can say is there had better not be any escalation, mission creep, or U.S. lives lost in this potential Obama military misadventure, kill Kony and get the [expletive deleted] out

A Saudi woman was sentenced Tuesday to be lashed 10 times with a whip for defying the kingdom’s prohibition on female drivers, the first time a legal punishment has been handed down for a violation of the longtime ban in the ultraconservative Muslim nation.

Normally, police just stop female drivers, question them and let them go after they sign a pledge not to drive again. But dozens of women have continued to take to the roads since June in a campaign to break the taboo.

It’s bad enough that the Saudi oil ticks are so backward that they make their women wear bags in public, but now they’re going to flog a woman, for driving? How barbaric is that? Where’s the outcry from the feminists and human rights activists? If this was happening in Israel, there’d already be a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning it.

/the whole Lefty world was in a prolonged uproar, screaming torture and war crimes, because the United States waterboarded three scum of the Earth terrorists, which resulted in no permanent physical or psychological harm, can you just imagine if we had subjected them to lashing?